I’ve written before about the importance of getting the lay of the landwhen you are a forager, and about how vital it is to have a wide range of foraging grounds. So when my friend Josh invited Holly and I up to the high Sierra for a foraging trip, he didn’t have to ask me twice.

Josh said he could have sworn he’d seen gooseberry bushes last year while he was mountain quail hunting, and we knew we’d see manzanita. I also wanted to get some spruce or fir tips to make fir tip syrup– I’ve been wanting to do that ever since I read Laurie’s excellent accountof all the things you can do with spruce or fir tips two years ago.

I also had it back in my mind that maybe — just maybe — we’d find a few morel mushrooms. I have a confession to make: I’ve never found a morel mushroom anyplace other than a mulch bed. Nope. I searched for them in vain in Minnesota — found lots of shaggy mane mushrooms, but no morels. Wah. Last year I spent some time looking, again, to no avail.

Now I’ve eaten more morels than I care to remember, but of late I’ve been getting them all from my friends at Earthy Delights. I even made a few awesome recipes with their morels several weeks ago. But I hesitated to post them. I was feeling like a bad forager. What? Making all this morel goodness without actually gathering your own?! I could hear Langdon Cooktsk! tsking! me in my mind… So I put morels out of my head.

The higher we drove, the further back in time we went. They say each 1,000 feet is like a week, and we were going up to 5,500 feet. But by the time we pulled over, at the site of an old forest fire, it felt like, well, early March in Sacramento — the whole area we were wandering around had been covered in snow just a few weeks ago.

The elderflowers, now in full bloom in Sacramento, were just barely leafing out here. The manzanita was just starting to flower; I care about manzanita because, like the fir tips, I want to make a syrup out of the manzanita apples. Josh said he’d seen the gooseberries — one of my favorite berries when I lived in Minnesota — growing along with some weird ground cover. It’s what we’re looking at in the picture above.

The world up there is magical, especially around the little rushing streams choked with cool plants, including another species of ribes – ribes, by the way, include both gooseberries and currants. This species was much more showy, and although we did not realize it at the moment, on further reflection I realized it’s probably a pink-flowered currant. Why? Other than the pink flowers, they are in a cluster: Gooseberries flower singly, currants flower in clusters.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Now to my knowledge, all currants and gooseberries are edible. Some are tastier than others. And now we know where two species live. Josh was up here last in August, looking for quail, and the berries were gone already. So we’ll come up in July to check.

Looking down, I also noticed thousands and thousands of amaranth seedlings. Amaranth is one of the best warm-weather greens, and is more nutritious than spinach. It grows like wildfire, so when we check for the berries in a month they ought to be large enough to harvest.

The cool thing about wandering around in a new place is encountering new plants for the first time. I knew what I was looking at was either gooseberry or currant, but I’d never seen these varieties before. And there were plenty of other plants none of us could identify.

photo by Holly A. Heyser

We were entranced by these flowers, and only later determined that they are called Five Spots, for obvious reasons.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

The forest had not really recovered from this fire yet, so we drove on a bit into some surviving woods. Once we stopped, I stepped off into the trees (and over some more gooseberries) and felt that cool, moistness of a forest after the snows have passed; a small surviving snowbank clung to the north face of a hollow.

“You know,” I said to Holly, “This feels like a place where you’d look around and see nothing, then all of a sudden there’d be morels all around you.” How did I know this? Partly intuition, partly from reading so much about morel habitat. And now I was finally in it: Conifer woods, springtime, moist bottom, patches of sun, lots of duff and humus. I looked down…

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

I swear I could hear the angels singing. A morel! And not just one, either. They were indeed all around us! We all froze, not wanting to accidentally step on a mushroom that goes for $30 a pound, minimum. All told, this patch yielded only about 30 mushrooms, but still. It was a grand moment. We also found lots of other mushrooms, including this pretty little fairy mushroom, which is smaller than the nail on your pinkie:

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

After this, we headed down the mountain to about 3,000 feet, and the terrain — and heat — felt more like home. Josh said he hunts this spot with some frequency, and told us if we were lucky, we might see the fox that hung out around there. Well, we didn’t see the fox, but we did see fox shit.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

And on it were two Lorquin’s admiral butterflies enjoying the meal. Apparently many butterflies are big fans of feces — who knew?

Further down the path we encountered something none of us had ever experienced: A ladybug swarm. They were everywhere — millions of them flying around in a cloud, wandering over every bush, getting into our hair and clothes. Josh and Holly said they even got bit by them. Go figure.

I spotted some wild mint and gathered it. Maybe I’ll make a wild mint ice cream in a day or so…

All in all, it was a good haul. We found some new places to forage, got some morels, fir tree tips and wild mint. And we saw all sorts of new things.

Back at home, I used what morels I did not give to Josh to revisit one of the first recipes I did for this site: venison with morel sauce. My original recipe calls for mostly dried morels and for venison medallions, but this time I made it with tenderloin and fresh morels.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

It is such a good dish. Nothing overly innovative — the combination of Port wine, venison, morels, demi-glace and butter has been around a century or more — but so satisfying with bread and red wine.

Finding those morels also made me feel better about posting the best dish I’d made with the morel mushrooms I’d received from Earthy Delights: Whole morels stuffed with my fava bean puree.

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

The dish is crazy simple. Make the fava bean spread first, then pipe it into large morels with a plastic bag with a corner cut out. Coat the mushrooms in a little olive oil and bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Slice with a very sharp knife (the mushrooms will be soft) and, if you happen to have them around, garnish with borage flowers and some smoked salt.

The bad news is we ate all our morels in that one sitting. The good news is Holly and I are headed to Seattle this week to go mushroom hunting again — this time with a real mushroom expert, Langdon Cook of Fat of the Land. Will let you know how we fare!

20 responses to “Currants, Venison, Morels and Favas”

Congratulations on your first morels!! I’ve only found a few in my back yard under mulch. But last week I was with friends that had found several pounds. I also stuffed them (with truffled chicken mousse) and also used a plastic bag. But I found I needed a tip to help the stuffing process.

Hank, what fire were you off of? I was up HWY88 on Saturday and was off Panther Creek Rd just past Ham’s Station. It was my first venture that high for morels (we have had great luck in the 4,500ft range) and my first look at a massive burn (not sure of the name of the fire). I joked with my wife that this would be a great area to deer hunt only to find out it is a preserve with firearm restrictions. I’ve been hearing lots of reports of morels up to 6,500ft right now I just don’t know any areas that high yet.

For Seattle, I’m sure Langdon has his spots, but if you like shoot me an email and I will send you a google map of my morel areas in WA. With the long winter it should be prime right now.

Great post, man. I’m just glad we found a place that actually had stuff!

Again, amazing pics. by Holly! That field of five-spots was in an open, very sunny field, folks! How she got those flowers without just taking a picture of a bunch of white fuzz is beyond me! She is a real pro.

I like that picture of us looking thoughtfully in the book. Our hats make the tops of our heads disappear into the bush.

Love the post That venison looks spectacular! And those five spots are beautiful. I’ve never seen or heard of those before. Love the pics of the butterflies, too. Very pretty wing design. Did you bring home any of the fairy mushrooms? I don’t know anything about those, but I do love their name. Are they edible?

JR: We were off Hwy 50 at 5,500 feet. Not sure what fire we were on. Thanks for the offer on the Washington morels, but Langdon just got back from one of his spots with 25 pounds of morels – so I think he’s doing fine…

Julia: Ooooh! Truffled chicken mousse? Very, very fancy.

Laura: We are looking at the Audubon guide to California. It’s a good grab bag, as it has sections on all kinds of things, not just plants or mushrooms or birds. And yeah, I know, flowers on the food. 1984 wants its recipe back…

Deanna: Yep. It’s a borage flower.

Cheyl: Nope. Did not bring home the fairy mushrooms. No idea what variety they really are, and even if they were edible, they were teeny.

I can’t tell you how reassuring it is to see the picture of you consulting a book. I’d pictured you up there, identifying all your plants off the top of your head, making those of us who need books look like foraging sissies. Whew.

Hi Hank – nice post, sounds like a fun time. We camp at various spots off Hwy 50 at around 5000-6000 ft (although we’re thinking of trying a new area this summer that’s at 7000 ft – whew! That’s high.). Lots of beautiful terrain up there. I am trying to learn more about foraging, in part because of my interest in all things edible, in part because I think it would be a fun activity to do with our kids and a great way to teach them about nature. I’ve found what look like a few decent resources on the web and also some books, but I’m wondering if it’s wise for a newbie like me to forage without a guide. Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks, D

Tamar: I know of no forager, no matter how old or how experienced, who doesn’t keep a lot of field guides around. I may know lots and lots of plants and animals, but I’ll never know even a fraction of what’s out there. Nature can always surprise you…

Dawn: It is never wise for a newbie to forage without a guide. Double and triple check your edibles against the Audubon book, the Peterson’s guide to western edible plants, and the web resources. Only when you are double-dog sure you are looking at what you think you are looking at should you eat it. And then, if you eat a little and are OK, only then should you give even a little to your kids.

Start with easy stuff like manzanita berries (I’ll post on them soon), elderberries (safest when cooked, don’t eat the stems!), blackberries and blueberries. Move from berries to other stuff as you get more experienced.

Good to see you had a chance to gather morels. I love those little spongy buggers. I usually sautee them in a bit of butter, add a dash of cream, and serve over steak. I was tickled at your butterfly comment. Once, while hiking in the hills of North Georgia, we came across a flurry of light blue butterflies hovering over and perched on the remains of a long dead mammal. My friend who was with me, who just happened to be a high school science teacher, told me some butterflies are attracted to (and will consume) the minerals found in fresh bones. I had a brief scifi moment where I was imagining killer, man-eating butterflies swarming over our cabin. LOL

Thanks, Hank! I was feeling nervous about heading out on my own, so I guess my gut feeling was on target. I’ll stick with the “easy’s” for now. So far, my only foraging finds have been snails and figs – pretty easy to identify. I’ve ordered Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons, and will add the other books you mentioned.

Thanks for the link! Having spent four and a half years in Alaska, my son and I enjoy spruce tip tea as a spring tradition, but here in our yard in Maine, we have more fir than spruce. I avoided it this year, as I wasn’t sure, but it’s great to know it can be used the same way!

We live in Minnesota where morels are fairly common on east-facing hardwood forest land. Since we usually only get harvests of a few morels a time we typically use them in things like salads and omelets. Today we had pea shoot and morel omelets with a bit of goat cheese for breakfast. Wonderful!